This was the phase where we got down and dirty. Originally, my brief hinted at more of an earnest and reflective voice and the concepts were also quieter because of it. The more we worked on it, we felt that it wouldn’t be memorable or snappy enough for social media (the intended use). Soooo I went back to the drawing board. I redid my brainstorming and moodboards (which put me a bit behind), but I ended up with what I think is a much better idea. I was struggling a lot with balancing what I wanted to focus on. Either I could choose an illustration style that is more challenging for me, which subsequently would be harder to animate also meaning the idea/story would need to be simpler. Or I could pick a style that’s more within my comfort zone, is easier to animate and has a stronger idea. I decided to do the latter. I think the desire to push myself in illustration style is really what threw me off. I had kind of decided on the style and voice ahead of doing any ideation, and while that makes sense sometimes, in this case I ended up going in the wrong direction for too long. Next time I’ll definitely be aware of that.

I’m now in the phase of refining my design and executing final styleframes. One thing that I’ve learned is I need to make more thumbnails. I’m really used to churning out different concepts and taglines, but not yet used to producing tons and tons of thumbnails. I definitely think this is something I need to work on and has become clear for me during this project.

Another thing that I actually learned from Tina’s project is moodboarding. For Tina’s project she’s doing concept art and she made tons of moodboards for very specific costumes and props and I think this is something that would definitely benefit me in the future. For instance, creating a moodboard with a bunch of examples of tropical plants and landscapes would have helped me a bunch while designing my frames. I did reference images while I went along, but having a curated selection in one place would be super valuable. I plan to implement that in the future.

For this phase I’d give myself an 8/10. I think I pushed myself to think of a lot of ideas that are different than the usual direction I would take, but ultimately, the concept and art direction are very similar to what I’ve done in the past. I’m a little miffed about that but I know it is all to serve the concept. And like I mentioned, I think I would’ve benefitted a lot from more sketches and thumbnails. However, I feel that overall I’m headed in a good direction, and haven’t been afraid to change things when they don’t feel right. Fingers crossed it will all turn out in the end!